Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; MP3 CD; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781683317340; 9781982539719
Crooked Lane Books (Blackstone Audio)
320 Pages
$26.99; $29.95; $12.99 Amazon
September 11, 2018
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A devoted dad is as precious as diamonds, but Carrie Singleton wouldn't know since her dad Jim's been on the lam most of her life. In an unusual family reunion, she finds Jim breaking into her cottage in the middle of the night. The fun really starts when he begs her to help him recover his half of a twenty-million-dollar gem heist he pulled off with the local jeweler, Benton Parr. When she refuses, Jim takes off again.
Carrie finds her father again behind bars for the recent murder of Benton Parr. Who made the connection? Unbeknownst to her, Carrie's boyfriend Dylan, an insurance investigator, has been searching for the gems. Determined to find the jewels herself, she starts examining every facet of Parr's life. She turns up a treasure trove of suspects, one of whom bashes her on the head as she's searching the victim's country cabin.
Retreating to the confines of the library where she works, Carrie watches as Smokey Joe, the resident cat, paws at a hole in the wall. Is he after the library's ghost Evelyn, or something shinier?
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Carrie Singleton is settling nicely into her childhood home of Clover Ridge, Connecticut; she has a job she loves, a great place to live, a new boyfriend, and a new pet. But suddenly her life is disrupted one night when she hears someone breaking into her home - who turns out to be her long-gone father, Jim Singleton. Jim is a thief who's come back to get the jewels he lifted in a long-ago heist, but his ex-partner isn't giving them up. He's asked Carrie for her help, but she refuses.
What makes it worse is she discovers the partner is a member of the library board, Benton Parr; and when Benton is murdered soon after and her father is a suspect, she decides to do a little sleuthing on her own to find the gems, wanting to give them to Dylan Avery, an insurance investigator who's been working on the case.
But Carrie believes that Dylan has only been dating her to get to her father and the jewels, and decides to break up with him. Now with her life in a shambles she doesn't know how to put it back together, and it will take a lot of soul-searching on her part to decide what's really important; trusting people in her life or leaving Clover Ridge and moving on again...
Having recently read the first in this series, I was hoping that the author would have honed it a little bit more. But I felt that Carrie still seemed immature in this one, repeatedly breaking up with Dylan because he "used her" to get to her dad, without actually talking to him about it. So she has no idea whether he used her or not, does she? She also mentions that one character has PTSD, but I don't think she understands what it is. You can't get PTSD because your husband accuses you of having an affair (which she was) or that he wants you to find a better paying job. A bit of research could have cleared this up.
There were also some things that seemed rather unbelievable. The library is supposed to be in an old Victorian home, yet has a utility room, a break room, an events room, and even a coffee shop! In what library would there be a coffee shop? They don't want you eating or drinking around the books, not to mention the smells that would permeate the library from the food. Then Sally told Carrie that she had to conduct the holiday chorus because the maestro took ill! Really? Singing in a chorus does not give you the skills to lead one. (I'm still amazed that this library has so many programs and events that other, larger library systems across the country have never done, but hey...) Anyway, because of all the things I've mentioned above, where do they keep the books? It seems all of the space is taken up for other things.
I also think there weren't enough descriptions of people - aside from the fact of Carrie's hair color, I honestly don't know what she looks like (although she does wear makeup, and that's a plus because I hate books where the MC 'throws on a little lip gloss' and everyone tells her how beautiful she is); and there are no descriptions of the town at all, so one can get an idea of what it looks like. More detail should have been paid to this.
I was also surprised that her father Jim, a known criminal, just waltzes into town after not being around while Carrie is growing up and expects her to help him retrieve stolen gems. What kind of father would do that? Why would she allow him to stay with her after that? I'd kick his sorry behind to the street without a how-do-you-do after that opening. Yet she does let him stay, and again unfortunately, it made the first part of the book so boring I almost gave up. The conversations between any of the characters had no zip, no spark. None of the people seemed to have any life in them; certainly not enough that if it hadn't picked up in the last half I may not have finished it.
I also don't understand why this is called Haunted Library Mysteries. The library may be haunted with the ghost of Evelyn, but she adds nothing to the book. She's only in it for about 10%, and when she did ask Carrie to do a favor for her - speak to Morgan - the entire episode seemed like filler and nothing more. It could have been left out entirely and wouldn't have changed the book one whit. She doesn't help solve the murders, she doesn't give any helpful information - she thinks listening to others' conversations is eavesdropping - so she doesn't even add to the story. Sorry, but there it is.
The part that irritated me the most though is the fact that Carrie is under the impression that Smoky Joe is a dog. That's right, a dog. You don't put out food for a cat several times a day; unlike dogs, they don't eat everything in the bowl until they writhe in pain. When they're finished, they walk away, so you can leave the kibble in the bowl all day. You also need a carrier for a cat. They don't lie down on the seat; they're curious and will walk all over the car - and you certainly don't consider leaving them alone in a car while you go about and run errands! Plus, if you're going to take the cat to work with you every day, invest in a leash so the cat can't just escape your arms (which they can do very easily since they have very sharp little claws, you know; as I mentioned, they aren't dogs).
I wasn't really surprised as to the identity of the killer, as there wasn't a big suspect pool in the first place, but this wouldn't have made a difference if the things I mentioned above had been otherwise. In the end, the book wasn't bad but it still needs work; we need to know what the town looks like, what the people look like, and better treatment of Smoky Joe.
https://smile.amazon.com/Read-Gone-Haunted-Library-Mystery/dp/1683317343/ref
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2501052664
More on Allison Brook's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/allison-brook/
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